CVE-2026-97506

About vulnerability

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

crypto: ixp4xx - fix buffer chain unwind on allocation failure

chainup_buffers() builds a linked list of buffer descriptors for a scatterlist. If dma_pool_alloc() fails while constructing the list, the current code sets buf to NULL and later dereferences it unconditionally at the end of the function:

buf->next = NULL; buf->phys_next = 0;

This can lead to a null-pointer dereference on allocation failure.

If the failure happens after part of the descriptor chain has already been allocated and DMA-mapped, the partially constructed chain also needs to be released.

Fix this by terminating the partially constructed chain on allocation failure and letting the callers unwind it via their existing cleanup paths. Also fix ablk_perform() to preserve the hook pointers before checking for failure, so partially built chains can be freed correctly.

Affected product:

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , Amazon Linux 2 ELS , CentOS 6 ELS , CentOS 7 ELS , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , CloudLinux 7 ELS , Debian 10 ELS , Debian 11 ELS , Oracle Linux 6 ELS , Oracle Linux 7 ELS , RHEL 7 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , TuxCare 9.8 ESU , Ubuntu 16.04 ELS , Ubuntu 18.04 ELS , Ubuntu 20.04 ELS

Affected packages:

linux @ 5.10.259 (+19 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.